kind of a B I G international deal



Hotel is tall building on the right side



Sunday evening as we were winding down, Justin said to his dad, "You better get to sleep, you have a hard day ahead of you tomorrow." I said, "A hard day? Dad has an easy day ahead... I'm the one with Caden this week..." Justin quickly jumped to his defense. I knew all Jim was doing was catching the train, then checking in to his hotel- probably nice food in between- no stress. His meetings didn't start until today. I have really tried to teach my kids compassion {and understanding} but I was sort of taken back that Justin was so much on his dad's side. What I was missing was... the part about him being alone in {another} new country, new responsibility big city... We're all here, he's on his own missing his family, which I get.

The two words Jim has used most frequently to describe his two days in Paris have been expensive and old. He's staying at two different hotels this week. In this photo, his hotel one of the buildings on the right. Both are supposedly a stones throw to the Eifel Tower as he's in downtown Paris. The hotel he's staying at now is 200 Euro ($270 USD) or so per night. The breakfast buffet is 32 Euro each- that's about $43 for breakfast for one person. We'd be broke with all six of us eating breakfast at that price!  Since we no longer have cell phones and our happy {cheap} family plan, we assumed there would be wireless Internet and we could just Skype. There is, but at a cost of course! They charge you by the hour to use the Internet (he took his own laptop) or for 24 hours, it was an additional $20.
I just looked up more information on the Paris Air Show {for the first time} and discovered it really is a BIG deal. I knew it was the largest show in the world, but didn't realize it was quite this huge. I assumed it was something on the scale of the Elmendorf air shows- wrong. Their site says it has 2,000 international exhibitors, 3,000 journalists, 200 official delegations and over 140 aircrafts present including flying displays. Pretty amazing- from June 20-26 and... Jim's the ground boss. I have to assume Justin was looking ahead to all the stress his dad would be shouldering with this new job... I now understand. Oh, he's going to get some compassion... I'm expecting a stressed-out husband in the next couple months, rightfully so... he's got a big job ahead of him. But, I also know he'll do great.

Here is their site:
http://www.paris-air-show.com/en